Australian Flying Corps

The Australian Flying Corps Educational Activities booklet is aimed towards secondary students. It is designed to complement the Australian Flying Corps publication which provides a brief history of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC), in particular their involvement during World War I.

The publication includes more than 100 images and photographs that captures the history of the forerunner to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

Australians in World War I: Australian Flying Corps—Education Activities

Chapter 3: Australians over the Holy Lands

I saw it-watched it. Even in the heat of battle, there is an irresistible fascination about seeing a machine, ours or theirs, hurtling to its doom.1

Australia was alone among the British dominions in establishing its own flying corps. On such a vast but sparsely populated continent aviation's potential was obvious and the idea of using aircraft to help in the country's defence appealed to many military and political figures. Their having played a vital reconnaissance role in the opening days of the war in Europe and in Mesopotamia proved the aircraft's value and while the Half Flight's campaign had come to an inglorious end, at Point Cook the AFC was growing.

While aircrew trained at the Central Flying School, the men charged with keeping them in the air had learnt their highly specialised trades elsewhere. If he knew about aircraft rigging or internal combustion engines a man's entry to the AFC was assured, but the Corps needed skilled men of many callings. The skills of the artisan and tradesman were those most readily suited to servicing the aeroplanes of the war's early years, and woodworkers, patternmakers, boat builders, metalworkers and coppersmiths were some of those whom the flying corps actively sought out.2

Few men had any previous acquaintance with aircraft. At Point Cook drill and basic military training occupied most of their time, and apart from learning how to swing a propeller, the first ground crews left Australia without having worked on aeroplanes.

Thursday 16 March 1916 dawned fine and cool over Melbourne. At the port a flag-waving crowd watched as tugs guided HMT Orsova from its berth out into the bay. Among those on board vying for a vantage point as the docks receded were the airmen and mechanics of No. 1 Squadron AFC, the first complete Australian flying unit to deploy overseas.

Upon reaching Egypt ground crews were dispatched to the two local British squadrons for instruction. Having never been taught gunnery, photography or bombing, some indeed never yet having flown, the squadron's airmen too had need of further training before they were considered ready for operations. Most were sent to England. When they reformed, the squadron's three flights were sent to widely separated stations in north-eastern Egypt, from which they patrolled over the deserts on both sides of the Suez Canal.

Already disadvantaged by their inexperience, the novice airmen flew markedly inferior aircraft to the German Fokkers and Aviatiks being used on that front. Described by Flying Officer Hudson Fysh as 'that poorest of all offensive, or defensive aircraft', the Australian B.E.2cs were so stable in the air that it was difficult to coax them out of straight and level flight. Against a faster, more manoeuvrable enemy, such reliability was a curse. The Australians, said Williams, depended 'mainly on luck'.

No. 1 Squadron had yet to operate as a complete unit when, in July and August 1916, some of its airmen flew in the skies over Romani with the Royal Flying Corps' No. 14 Squadron, playing an important role in the victory that brought an end to Turkish designs on the Suez Canal. Three months later, in November 1916, No. 1 Squadron was at last brought together. By then the British armies, including the Australian Light Horse, had crossed the Sinai to the Palestinian border. Beginning with photographic flights over Turkish lines, No. 1 Squadron's operations soon took a more aggressive turn when they bombed Beersheba on 11 November in the heaviest raid yet seen in the Middle East.

Despite the superiority of their machines, the Germans rarely challenged the Australians as they reconnoitred and raided, sometimes deep behind Turkish lines. During the battles for Magdhaba and Rafa in December 1916 and January 1917, Australian and British aircraft bombed and machine-gunned enemy troops unmolested. At Rafa one airman came face to face with the aftermath. Flying over the town after the battle, Stanley Muir saw scattered groups of Bedouin scavenging weapons and ammunition. When engine trouble forced him to land, he found trenches piled with Turkish corpses.3

Muir was lucky to have come to no harm during his unexpected sojourn in Rafa. Others forced down behind Turkish lines by a faulty engine or enemy fire faced a violent death at the hands of Arab tribesmen or an indefinite period in Turkish captivity. More than once, fellow airmen risked everything to rescue them.

Before the first attack on Gaza, No. 1 Squadron pilot Reg Baillieu and his observer Ross Smith landed and picked up a downed British flier from behind enemy lines.4 Both were awarded the Military Cross. A day later Frank McNamara performed a far more daring feat.5 In a damaged plane, with blood pouring from a deep wound in his leg, he saw Douglas Rutherford's aircraft on the ground.6 McNamara chanced a landing, and racing against Turkish cavalry also charging to the scene, he taxied his aircraft towards Rutherford, who climbed onto the cowling, grabbing the rigging wires as they tried to take off. But damaged by anti-aircraft fire, carrying the weight of two men and with an injured pilot at the controls, the Martinsyde crashed. The airmen abandoned the broken aeroplane and made for Rutherford's B.E.2c. Just as the Turks began shooting, the biplane struggled into the sky. On the point of fainting from blood loss, McNamara fought unconsciousness for 110 kilometres before making a safe landing and passing out at the controls. For this death-defying rescue McNamara received the AFC's only Victoria Cross.

During the opening months of 1917 the war in the Middle East stalled before the Gaza-Beersheba line. Australian and British aircraft played a critical role in the first Allied attempt to take Gaza in late March, but the Turks held on. By then the Germans were increasingly willing to give battle. They, said Bull, 'have the very latest aircraft which we have not got. The "heads" do not seem to think they are needed on this front'.7 Clearly they were. More time passed, however, before they arrived.

The air war was becoming more dangerous, but men remained keen to join the AFC. In the months before the Gaza fighting No. 1 Squadron lost some of its most experienced airmen and mechanics to training squadrons in England, where three AFC squadrons were being prepared for service in Europe. To retain its fighting strength the squadron took in new recruits, many from the Australian Light Horse, which also contributed significantly to No. 2 Squadron's ranks.

In April 1917 the Turks repulsed a second Allied assault on Gaza. From high above the battle, airmen watched a panorama of war unfold. Flying the first reconnaissance over the front, Williams, from kilometres away, noticed steam coming from the tanks taking part in the assault. As they crossed the open ground between the lines he saw Turkish guns knock them all out. The next day he saw the enemy at much closer quarters when he led an attack on Turkish reinforcements. 'There was pandemonium', he wrote, 'men and horses ran in all directions … and bombs dropped anywhere in the vicinity could hardly miss a target'.8 Ground fire killed Norman Steele.9 But Williams was pleased nonetheless, writing later that five officers in five aircraft with bombs inflicted 'such damage on a cavalry division as to prevent it making an attack'.10

With the Turks still occupying Gaza, fighting subsided as the front settled into a six month stalemate. Both sides recovered their strength and prepared for the fight they knew must come before the British could advance into Palestine. While the armies readied themselves, the sky became the main battlefield. Reconnaissance and photographic work took on an even greater importance, and rivalry in the air intensified as both sides looked for signs of where the others' forces were concentrated.

With the impending British attempt to break into Palestine drawing nearer, maps of the country between Gaza and Beersheba were compiled from photographs taken by No. 1 Squadron machines in constant danger of attack by German scouts. Escorts always accompanied reconnaissance, photographic or artillery flights, but their presence was no guarantee of safety. On 8 July two No. 1 Squadron machines were escorting a third on a reconnaissance flight when one was shot down and the pilot killed. Claude Vautin, the second escort's pilot, was forced down and taken prisoner.11 Only the reconnaissance machine made it back; five days later another was shot down and its crew killed.

German supremacy in the air was, however, on the wane. A new RFC Squadron came to relieve No. 1 Squadron of its reconnaissance duties, leaving the Australians to concentrate on bombing operations. Meanwhile the highly praised Bristol Fighters were beginning to appear in the Middle East, though not on the Australians' airfield. Instead, in late October 1917 two R.E.8s arrived at No. 1 Squadron. After he worked on one the following Saturday, Bull declared: 'I am not very keen on the R.E.8s though they are our most up-to-date machines in this Squadron'.12 Soon they were flying daily reconnaissance patrols, sometimes five abreast to meet the urgent need for photographs of the Turkish line.

The long awaited battle opened on the Turk's far left flank at Beersheba on 31 October 1917. Late that afternoon a daring mounted charge by the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments carried the Australians into the town, deciding the battle and opening the way for another attack on Gaza. Combat continued along the line into early November, but when patrols reached Gaza on the 6th they found the town, once so fiercely defended, to be free of Turks. They were retreating towards Nablus, chased by No. 1 Squadron. Ground crews worked day and night to keep planes flying and Australian aircraft joined British squadrons on heavy bombing raids behind Turkish lines; roads, railway stations and airfields were favoured targets. After British troops occupied Jerusalem on 9 December the ground war lapsed into a period of relative quiet.

1918 began well for No. 1 Squadron. Better aircraft began arriving. By the end of January the squadron had nine Bristol Fighters and by April, eighteen. The R.E.8s, Martinsydes and B.Es were gone. One pilot recalled of the new aircraft: 'you could use it for any old job going-fighting, bombing, reconnaissance, artillery co-operation'.13 His casual description belies the fliers' and mechanics' happiness at the prospect of flying and working on these powerful machines. 'A better job than the R.E.8', said Bull, while on the other side a German diarist lamented 'Our machines are no longer a match for the English'.14

After seventeen months of war flying the Australians in the Middle East at last had an aircraft the better of any they would meet in combat. From then on the squadron carried out most of the Army's distant reconnaissance operations and all of the photography for map making. They also went after German aircraft, seeking combat when once they would not have dared.

Lieutenant Stan Nunan flew with No. 1 Squadron in 1918, completing more than seventy hours of operational work before his first aerial combat. He described the experience in a letter to his family:

Holy Sailor! There loomed out of the sky 6 lovely big fat Albatross scouts. It didn't look too healthy they were about 1000 feet above us which is a big advantage … Well it was no good sitting there and being murdered, so we pulled our noses up and went straight into the Hun formation … they split up all over the sky. I followed two … Put a long burst into one from my front gun. He put his nose down vertically. I followed him down at about 200 miles an hour. My Ob. got both guns to bear … and ripped them into him … The Hun burst into flames and crashed in an orchard. Meanwhile his mate had been 'looking' at us from a distance. I turned on him and he tooled to the hills with another. I overtook them and they adopted their favourite tactics of dodging in and out of the hills and gullies … I circled with them for 15 minutes and had the time of my life … we put into them nearly 1000 rounds of ammunition and got so close at times that we could see the colour of their eyes … I enjoyed it immensely as soon as I got over the first touch of stage fright.15

Nunan's success in his first combat speaks to his training, his already lengthy experience of frontline flying, his airmanship and to the quality of the machine in which he flew. Williams regarded the Bristol Fighter as the best British aircraft of the war-fast, manoeuvrable, powerful and well armed: 'it could deal with any fighter'.16

Never approaching the scale or intensity of the air war over the Western Front, combat in the skies of the Middle East was, even so, a violent deadly affair. In terms that any airman in France would have understood, Leslie Sutherland explained, 'the idea of war-time scraps is to get hold of a chap who is not expecting you, and do him filth before he knows what it is all about'.17

Dogfights overturned this basic tenet of aerial fighting. Sutherland's recollection of the Middle East's biggest air battle was so vivid as to make his 'pulse quicken' more than a decade later:

The air is pungent with the smell of cordite; filled with the … staccato chatter of the Vickers, Lewis and Spandaus … Half-rolling, diving, zooming, stalling, 'split-slipping', by inches you miss collision with friend or foe … stuttering streams of lead, with only tracer bullets, or a crackle or smack in your wings or fuselage to appraise you of where the enemy fire is going, or has gone. A Pfalz flashes by, and down, with a Bristol on his tail … bullets thud into the tail of the Hun … (he) zooms, and turns in an endeavour to shake the Bristol off his tail. In vain. There is a wilder, more violent noise. The Hun machine is hurtling earthwards, not diving or spinning. Not trying to evade its pursuer. Hurtling … Finish.18

In such free-for-alls and in the more calculated attacks by one airman against another were the Germans driven from the skies over the Middle East. Thus blinded to their enemy's preparations, the Germans and Turks never saw the vast British build up along the Mediterranean coast and believed until the end that the attack to drive them from Palestine would come elsewhere. Then, early on the morning of 19 September, Ross Smith, piloting No. 1 Squadron's giant Handley-Page, bombed El Afule's central telephone exchange and railway station, cutting Turkish communications. Soon British artillery was pounding enemy positions on Palestine's coastal plain, before infantry burst through the line, opening the way for cavalry and the Australian Mounted Division to charge northwards and cut off two Turkish armies near Nablus.

Within hours of the offensive beginning, Australian aircraft were flying over the battle, reporting the withdrawal of Turkish forces while also bombing and machine-gunning men and animals below. Flying in relays, Australian and British airmen killed relentlessly in what one called 'a day of slaughter'. More such days followed. Surrounded on three sides and with only one avenue of retreat, large numbers of Turkish troops tried to cross the Jordan, but the columns of humanity, animals and vehicles made easy targets for marauding airmen. Twenty thousand Turks on the Samaria-El Afule road faced fliers bent on their slaughter and when Australian Light Horsemen came upon them later in the day the traumatised survivors surrendered without a fight.

Flying dawn patrol on 21 September, Nunan and Allen Brown reported large numbers of Turks retreating along the narrow cliff-flanked road through the Wady Fara gorge.19 Having bombed the lead vehicles, the pilots and observers turned their machine guns on the trapped column from just metres away. Clive Conrick, Nunan's observer, saw the impact of his bullets on the terrified men clambering up the roadside cliffs. Then Nunan raked the column, remembering later the 'abject terror' on his victim's faces. Their ammunition exhausted, they flew from the scene as more Bristols appeared to continue the killing. Sutherland, in one of these machines, called it 'a bomber's, a machine-gunner's paradise'. The Australians destroyed the column's rear vehicles, and for the rest of the day bombed and machine-gunned the trapped men and horses in relays until 'the road was a shambles … littered with the bodies of the dead and dying …'20

Some Turks waved white cloths in a gesture of surrender, but airmen could not take prisoners and the slaughter continued into the next day. When infantry arrived expecting to meet a large enemy force they 'were absolutely appalled … they took a hundred prisoners-all that were left'.21 Writing in the 1930s, Sutherland described the killing at Wady Fara as 'not so much war as cold-blooded, scientific butchery', saying 'I feel sick even now when I think of it'.22

Under the weight of a sweeping British offensive and repeated, virtually unopposed air attacks, the Turkish armies in Palestine were in disarray. The British met little resistance as they advanced towards Damascus. Wherever airmen found bodies of retreating Turks, they attacked with machine gun and bomb. Finally, at the end of September a group of some 4000 Turks, too exhausted to move, simply sat on the road and awaited their fate as aircraft dived on them. Sated by the murderous days through which they had just lived, the Australian fliers took pity and held their fire.23 On 1 October cavalry and Light Horse units entered Damascus.

For the remaining weeks of the war No. 1 Squadron flew reconnaissance operations and attacked ground troops when the chance arose. On 26 October advance units of the British army and an Arab force entered Aleppo and five days later, on 31 October, an armistice ended the war in the Middle East. Four months later the men of No. 1 Squadron left their aerodrome for the last time:

We marched away to the railway station, but as we passed the hangers, many a head turned for a last look. There was the nose of a Bristol looking out of each.24

8. R. Williams, These are facts; the autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, The Australian War Memorial and the Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, pp. 64–65, quote p. 65.